"Who scored? Shh, shh, better don't tell me," demanded Carlos Alcaraz this Tuesday. The press conference after his quarter-final victory at Wimbledon against Tommy Paul was strange, very strange, perhaps the strangest of his career. International media were asking him questions, L'Equipe, The Athletic, and he was looking at the Spanish journalists who were watching the Eurocup semi-finals between Spain and France on their computers. If there was calm among the reporters, the world number three answered calmly, but if there was a murmur, he tried to guess what had happened.
During one of his first answers, Kolo Muani scored and just in the last one, Lamine Yamal equalized. When Dani Olmo completed the comeback, he was already leaving the facilities of the London Grand Slam. "I have to confess that in the last set of my match, when I felt I was dominating, I thought about finishing faster to be able to go watch the football," Alcaraz admitted, radiant, ecstatic. Everything is going well.
At the All England Club, he triumphs on his way to his second consecutive title, with Daniil Medvedev as the penultimate obstacle next Friday in the semifinals, and in Germany, his friends are doing the same. Because Alcaraz has a close relationship with several national team members, such as Pedri and Ferran Torres, with whom he has been seen partying, and he is a close friend of Álvaro Morata.
These days, in fact, they are in constant communication, to the point that this Tuesday Morata sent Alcaraz a photo via WhatsApp watching his quarter-final match against Tommy Paul before going out to warm up on the Allianz Arena pitch. "This morning I called Álvaro to wish him luck. I did it before Spain's debut in the Eurocup, it worked, and now we always talk on match days," explained Alcaraz, who has always confessed that he is not overly into football and that he became a Real Madrid fan to annoy several of his family members, who are big Barcelona fans.
Beyond football, Alcaraz, in a bit of a hurry, valued what he achieved on the court, his sixth Grand Slam semifinals, two at the US Open, two at Roland Garros, and now two at Wimbledon. "Having so many semifinals, I think it weighs on my opponents. They know they have to do great things to beat me in a Grand Slam," commented the Spaniard who will face the same opponent he had last year in the penultimate match before celebrating his first title in London.
Back then, the match was quick, a victory in three sets. This time, Alcaraz is once again the favorite: "Most of the matches do depend on me, and that's quite good. Both for better and for worse, they depend on me. Daniil is like a wall, he gets to every ball."